Melting Point: Dana Sanderson Short Mysteries, #4

By Kari Kilgore

An Invisible Countdown to Death

A cookie-cutter suburban house. A strange aroma. A dead body, and a suspect refusing to talk.
Sometimes a stumped investigation needs a non-standard mind.
A perfect case for Dana and her best friend Andre to work their magic.
Can they solve the crime before the next victim's time runs out?

A Dana Sanderson Short Mystery

An excerpt from Melting Point:

Mira took a long drink of her coffee, staring out over the trees outside before she focused on Dana again.

"We've got the suspect, sure. Sitting in lockup, smug as hell, and not saying a word. What we need from you, Dana, is how on earth she did it."

Dana drew back, blinking. "Me? I'm just an insurance investigator. This is your field. Surely the GBI has people on this." "

They do. And they're coming up empty so far. Some of these cases are months old. They're afraid  this woman had a longer list of people she was paid to knock off."

Mira took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

"They'll probably find it," she said, "but I can't stop wondering what would have happened if someone totally innocent had walked into that bedroom instead. Like maybe her niece or nephew."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Mar 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781386684541

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Melting Point

For all of us with non-standard minds

Melting Point

A Dana Sanderson Short Mystery

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Melting Point

As temporary office spaces went, Dana Sanderson had to admit this one wasn’t bad.

Modern chairs, adjustable in every possible direction, covered in soft blue leather. A sleek rectangular conference room table that had plenty of room for those five chairs, but didn’t take up so much space no one could walk around it.

A gleaming steel pitcher waited in the middle of the table, surrounded by tall, sturdy glasses that made Dana smile. They were exactly like the highball glasses in her favorite restaurant nearby, all the way down to the little dimples around the middle for better grip.

More importantly, a side table held a carafe made of the same steel as the water pitcher, but filled with smooth, rich coffee. She’d already taken advantage of an orbital array of big blue mugs with every coffee condiment known to humanity tucked in around the edges.

Perfect for a former code wrangler and IT geek who’d happily gotten used to working from home with a fabulous career change. Then occasionally had to show up for meetings earlier than she was used to and wrangle her sleepy brain.

A wall of windows offered a second-floor view of a pleasant city park—with trees and flowers and even playground equipment—rather than an endless vista of mirrored building windows. Or worse, a cramped cubicle with no windows within fifty feet. One of the many advantages of being in tree-lined, residential Decatur rather than bustling downtown Atlanta or a soulless office park in the suburbs.

Rather than dull, generic art, the other walls held vivid photos taken within a few miles of the office. In Decatur, that meant sprawling live oak trees, idyllic bike paths, and funky-cool shops and restaurants. Including Dana’s favorite pizza joint.

All the satellite offices for the Gossalor Insurance Group maintained a meeting room every bit as nice as this one, with most of the same supplies and atmosphere. All over Atlanta, out into the distant suburbs, and dotted here and there around the Southeast.

Each and every one of them available to Dana as Gossalor’s special investigator in the fraud department, specializing in cybercrime. She remained grateful (and